Initiation for Whitey: Notes on Poverty and Riot

...It therefore gives them the dole—but under extremely degrading circumstances...

...but starting with a white man, you never could produce a black man—because the white chromosome is recessive...

...It is one of my favorite quotes...

...But what do you teach a kid when you pay him a government salary to threaten the government or to spread mindless propaganda...

...There is much truth in these strictures...

...There are some respects in which it is not enough merely to pay the poor...

...11I One problem for the boy growing up in the ghetto is that models are lacking to show how one might successfully enter the world of trade and technology in which most American males are employed...

...How many degrees in that?' He said three hundred and sixty...

...And we do...

...The philosophy of hustling must be undermined and destroyed by any poverty program worthy of being taken seriously...

...That is all...

...More important than either the dole or subsidized autonomous projects is the need for a full-scale national economic program, without which local projects are doomed to dry up from lack of umbilical connections...

...Maybe so...

...Whether or not such generalizations are justified, the hysteria which prompts them finds ready symbols in the bombing escalation in Hanoi and toward the Chinese border, in the photos of "Vietnam-type" tanks rumbling through the streets of Newark, in news broadcasts announcing that Viet Cong are flushed out of tunnels with "anti-riot" gas...

...For certain foundation-financed theorists, "community support" is a negative term, because it involves "condescending liberals...

...I asked him was three hundred and sixty degrees, then, the maximum of degrees in anything...

...Political emotion bounces from far Right to far Left, with no room anywhere for the constructive analysis so desperately needed if American democracy is to survive in any viable condition...

...On being told they must go through a specific training process over a period of years, they throw up their hands...

...In retaliation, guardsmen in Newark smashed black-owned stores, and troops and police shot up Negro dwelling-places...

...But when it comes to knowledge, what he mainly wants is a ready-made line, a set of hard-nosed aphorisms—so that he will have a quick answer in any threatening situation...

...In their roles as true believers, as masculine upholders of honor and right, unafraid to take violent action, even to die, in behalf of their beliefs, the Black Power cultists are more classically Western than the white flower ideologists out to transform human nature with drugs, youth, love, colored lights, pop music and polysexuality...

...if you started with a black man, a white man could be produced...

...Perhaps they had reasons for aiming to miss...

...The power who remains "on the street" (or parked in his Cadillac) and thus available for identification, is the hustler...

...But for that reason also they of all people can least afford any kind of self-deception...

...But Richard Hughes, the liberal governor of New Jersey, is warning that we must draw a line to separate us from "the jungle...

...If Whitey won't give them an initiation, then they'll initiate Whitey...

...Their action examined apart from rhetoric said very simply and explicitly, "we will not endure these circumstances...

...Which costs America more—riots or oil depletions...

...yet apparently this job will get little more than peanuts allocated to it as long as our President is escalating the war in Vietnam...

...One thing the poverty program has proved is that simply turning over funds and programs to the poor does not in itself enable them to transform the circumstances that keep them poor...

...If this is gospel truth, then speculation is mere distraction...

...The culture of the ghetto must be absorbed and utilized—which is not the same as being destroyed...

...And the investigatory, punitive system of welfare only hampers them...

...There are others on the left, myself included, who still see America as less than monolithic, who insist that there are forces available in this country to change both foreign and domestic policy...

...The gains of the poverty program, like the gains of the civil rights movement, have led mainly to bitterness and a sense of promises betrayed...

...He wants to punish America...

...1 Andrew Kopkind echoes this attitude in The New fork Review of Books (August 24„ 1967), where he states that "Morality, like politics, starts at the barrel of a gun...

...Some years from now, their argument goes, the racial conflict will have resolved itself, and the usual variety of opinions and loyalties will flourish among a more relaxed Negro population...

...Surely of all the segregated groups that have fought against social stigmata, the Negroes—brought to this country against their will and subject to slavery, lynch law and emasculation— have the toughest fight on their hands...

...All of which presents problems, to put it mildly...

...On one hand America recognizes that certain elements among the poor cannot be absorbed into the world of steady, responsible work...

...He said 'Yes.' "I said, 'Well, why is it that Masons go only to thirty-three degrees?' "He had no satisfactory answer...

...What makes them think that people who are not fully employable are fully capable of administering poverty funds...

...That is all...

...Presumably he learned this from "the underground press, the speeches of Malcolm, the works of Fanon, the songs of the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin," which he cites as "the important literature now...

...But once one does indulge in thought, monistic historical and political assumptions won't go very far toward describing or explaining the rather complex set of circumstances which surround American poverty and our various attempts to cope with it...

...On the other hand America perpetuates the myth that it is an open society in which all can find honorable work...

...It's better than nodding out on junk...

...We need more channels, more representation, a larger, fairer dole—and nationally planned work programs involving both middle-class and poor people engaged together in meaningful reconstruction of their own country...

...Frequently connected with the Black Power slogan is the idea of revolutionary violence—for some a religion, others a therapy—which seems in this moment of rioting and backlash an inevitable but hopeless development...

...I want to read a quote...

...He's not abandoning America—he can't...

...As I write the slum areas of several dozen large American cities have been ravaged by Negro rioters and by the cops and guardsmen who put them down...

...When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "I mean just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less...

...Even before the rioting, the poverty program had raised serious issues in relation to the welfare state and the problem of democratic participation...

...We can and should eliminate the abuses, the condescension, the costly and degrading check-ups...

...Yet poverty programs turned over entirely to "local" groups were often at least as corrupt as programs run through the standard political bureaucracies...

...Carmichael, unlike Mr...

...It comes from Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll...

...He solves his identity problem much as does the hustler—by adopting a set of absolute answers, in this instance those of the apocalyptic black revolutionary...

...But for me, the answer was that Masonry, actually, is only thirty-three degrees of the religion of Islam, which is the full projection, forever denied to Masons, although they know it exists...

...It is only reasonable that many a young Negro will prefer this conception of himself to that of the disadvantaged student, fighting a lonely struggle to educate himself and keep his bearings in the face of discrimination and poverty...

...To cite only the most glaringly destructive feature, it may force a husband to leave or pretend to leave his family so that his wife may collect Aid to Dependent Children...

...The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things...

...And since no one disputes that there was but one Original Man, the conclusion is clear...

...As far as looting is concerned, the Negroes are small-time compared to American businessmen—and I don't mean the little shopkeepers either...

...Which is simply that the hustler knows all the answers...

...he may deride the intellectual inadequacy of the new black ideology...

...It is not enough to turn the slums over to the slum.dwellers: that is too much like what they already have, whether you call it "participation" or penury...

...Even in cases where they are, the most successful local programs plus a steady dole would not by themselves break up American poverty...

...Malcolm, for instance, with his razor wit, had at any point in his life —whether as zoot-suit hipster, Black Muslim, or pan-African national ist—a complete set of consistent answers which turned complexity into a captivating simplicity...

...But at the same time they maintain that poverty funds must be turned over exclusively to the poor...

...People who are now battling the welfare inspectors increment by increment could be staffing hospitals, rebuilding cities, providing services, perhaps creating whole new communities...

...when he gets no response, he feels himself nothing...

...1I Most radical and liberal commentators are quick to condemn what they correctly describe as America's "two-faced" attitude toward poverty...

...2 The trouble is that street knowledge can't risk unsureness, can't risk leaving questions open...

...What happens these days to the large majority of boys who aspire to be "street-wise"—who in fact must, simply to survive—but who can't make it big as hustlers and who lack some lucky talent that would enable them to rise in the world unassisted...

...Riots or market manipulations...

...You owe us more than you can ever give us...

...There are sad stories among poverty workers of Negro youths who approach, say, psychologists, and announce, I've seen what you do, man: why can't I take your place...

...But channels for doing just that have always been open, and remain some of our most valuable social possessions...

...Supposedly they were shooting at snipers, but one has to wonder about the existence of snipers who hit so few targets...

...Perhaps the most productive stance would be an open acknowledgement of ambiguity—so that we may simultaneously proceed with an improved welfare system and an economic program which could free every individual capable of being freed...

...From the chapter "Satan" in The Autobiography of Malcolm X.) Like Malcolm, Stokely Carmichael lays great stress on "the power to define...

...It is frightening to see a cycle in operation—a cycle of poverty and rhetoric, violence and backlash...

...They also insist that the poor themselves should be the main administrators of poverty funds—an idea which influenced the OEO's original concept of Community Action Projects...

...Real participation would involve openings beyond the ghetto into areas of massive economic opportunity and retraining...

...Here is an excerpt from a speech to the students of Morgan State College, as transscribed in The Movement, June 1967: "Now then we come to the question of definitions...

...I have already mentioned the hustler's credo of might equals right, but there is another aspect of his makeup worth underscoring in terms of its educational implications...

...If he goes into the Armed Services, a Negro boy may get his desired initiation...

...And he is very American in the way he goes about creating his position...

...In an atmosphere of frustration, anger and expanded freedom, desperate alternatives are quickly put forward...

...Carroll, identifies with Humpty Dumpty...

...For urban Negroes, the pull-back of the poverty program may have been that final straw which broke down their habitual patience and resignation...

...For in many cases, seen in terms of a might makes right perspective, the poverty workers have been fawning—allowing themselves to be conned and worse (sometimes much worse) . And this too confirms the desperate identity of superiority...

...With every escalation a portion of faith is torn away from this country...

...The ballyhooed War on Poverty was sabotaged, according to the burgeoning number of left ideologists, by an essentially racist country conducting an imperialist war in Asia and bent on holding down exploited dark-skinned masses everywhere...

...they would at best be no more than the mainstays of an isolated community in an inferior economic position...

...For those who have fallen by the wayside, it provides "social services...

...And righteous free-lance violence is hardly an exclusive property of Negroes, as an evening with your TV set will confirm...

...We still insist that there is a fight worth fighting on the battleground of American politics—in the interests of not only the Negroes but all the people...

...But surviving on a welfare check or an income subsidy is not the same as having a future...

...IV Interesting that so far the rioters have attacked mainly police (with bottles and bricks and words, seldom bullets) and property...

...The black man in the ghetto stabs at his own heart, which is also the heart of our cities, and as the ghettos burn, one hears loud crackings all around, as if the whole crazy country were on fire...

...He offers this identity to drifting youth—an identity of innate bravery and superiority and dedication and solidarity...

...3...

...And finally, how could political or social ideals be anything more to such a youth than expressions of class or race or personal drives for power ?1 Yes, we have failed to make our American representative system truly representative—we have left a segment of our population powerless and impoverished...

...Riots or drug mark-ups...

...But in the meantime it is a terrible thing to see whites and blacks locked into oratorical abstractions which only reinforce hatred and guilt and violence...

...If the issue is reduced to whether there should be a guaranteed income or not, of course there should be...

...But hustling as an outlook or as a mode of activity finally cannot comprehend the various problems which have to do with learning, training, saving, postponing—and other attitudes necessary to achieve full economic participation in an increasingly technological society, whether one is "middle-class" or not...

...The young Negro who is successful in "straight" employment is apt to move away—and become identified with the larger world, which is seen from the ghetto as a white world...

...Let me propose the virtues of a double-minded attitude—for purposes of action as well as analysis...

...He is shrewd about the use of force, at least within his own precincts...

...A white man may argue that Negro violence is not politically efficient...

...I am afraid that many of them—at least the ones who project onto the Negro their longing for a noble savage—must share with Congress and other officials, and with society at large, a responsibility for the riots...

...To speak realistically, people on dole will not have "dignity," no matter what...

...The ghetto itself must be destroyed...

...I am told that the Irish riots of the nineteenth century were bloodier than anything we've yet seen from the Negroes...

...If I'm so great, he thinks, then I will take what you have...

...The worker looking above him would see opportunity and not merely a closed corporation...

...Hustling will be given up only when it is the least useful defense—which is to say, only when jobs with futures are provided, jobs which involve a meaningful connection with the larger society...

...August, 1967...

...Nepotism flourished, minority factions usurped whole organizations, and an inordinate amount of money was siphoned into plans, studies, staff and equipment...

...Note that Mr...

...Perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of HARYOU was its hiring of black nationalist youths in sinecures designed to keep them from touching off riots...

...Everywhere poverty funds were available, new elements who had never been active in politics came forth to struggle with traditional power groups and in many cases to make space for themselves in the political structures of their communities...

...After a speech of Malcolm's, his followers repeated his answers by rote—as they still do in the junior nationalist "five-percenter" groups, where youngsters are given a catechism to memorize, full of anthropological and historical absurdities.3 No doubt poor people are not the only ones susceptible to the allornothing concept of learning...

...These efforts are not mutually exclusive...

...For us, American resources have been tragically misspent, aims deflected and purposes mis guided...

...But if he stays on the street, the young Negro is likely to collide with another type—exemplified by Carmichael and LeRoi Jones, while...

...Understand that . . . the first need of a free people is to define their own terms...

...Some inhabitants of the ghetto felt they were entitled to loot white-owned stores, and that the police and troopers were agents of hostile forces...

...and the disgraceful Ninetieth Congress passes legislation which only punishes the cities and prolongs the horror in Vietnam...

...Yet when the poverty program began it drew thousands of previously disenfranchised poor people who saw in its pitifully inadequate funding an opportunity to create institutions of social equity, and who insisted they were all the more American to do so...

...HARYOU in New York is one of the many Community Action Projects which suffered from a too-loose distibution of funds, resulting not only in shortages but in cases where a few hustlers were accused of taking up to 100 per cent kickbacks from the kids they hired...

...The activist critics of the poverty program often try to resolve this situation by urging that poor people are just as capable and selfsufficient as anyone, and that all they need to set them on a level of social and economic equality is a regular dole—as a matter of right, not charity...

...For that reason they are prey to the most self-destructive temptations...

...The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "who is to be master...

...Reporters have confirmed that in both Newark and Detroit, the cops and guardsmen shot at each other and at the sparks of their own bullets striking houses...

...The young militant has no respect for those who come to his neighborhood to tell him how great he is...

...We will talk about that for a 697 in a quick formula, it will likely be banished from consciousness...

...If he relies on ideology—well, certainly the Jews, Irish, and Italians protected themselves with cynical philosophies about American opportunity (and their own superiority)—and certainly they developed their share of hustlers and hoods...

...But for poor boys such a misconception is fatal, because it means that training and education are seen as initiation—as into a club, or a secret society—rather than as an open process...

...Among these circumstances is the deep-grained philosophy of the hustle, which sees society and personal relations as a series of power games...

...In some cases, they waited in ambush to shoot up cars which failed to stop at unmanned roadblocks...

...Precisely that life is a hustle—that might not only makes right but is identical with it...

...He wants not to be caught short verbally, for he knows a sharp retort is another form of power...

...It is very, very important because I believe that people who can define are masters...

...And often they were even less representative of the people in the neighborhoods...

...I mean the swingers on Wall Street and the WASP's who head up our huge corporations...

...At any rate, the vast majority of those killed were Negroes, and in most cases few people were killed until the order was given for official triggers to be pulled...

...Yet for all its saving graces, its toughness, flexibility and hardboiled humor, the culture of poverty is self-defeating and self-perpetuating...

...One is the idea of "Black Power"—which at its best involves developing the ghettos (now partially gutted) as economic and political "power bases," at its worst reinforces the existing stalemate of separation and racial mistrust and drives away the liberal forces who are needed to speed the dissolution of that stalemate...

...Somehow programs have to involve linkages with the mainstream of society—for the benefit of all concerned...

...V The militant—the creator of and the believer in black rhetoric—is deeply dependent on the very world he is scorning and threatening...

...So that if something can't be picked up 2 "'John,' I said, 'how many degrees in a circle?' 'He said, 'Three hundred and sixty.' "I drew a square...

...They have fire-bombed white stores, loan offices and adjacent housing...

...And for most people, it's not necessary—not when there is so much work to do in this country...

...Basically they insist on the dole in recognition of the fact that the poor are not fully employable...

...but he cannot legitimately tell a young Negro that his allegiance to the catchwords of Black Power does not make him feel better on the inside...

...Where do we go from here...

...Slum-dwellers may not run their affairs in accordance with the standard models, but they are capable of running their own affairs...

...The young militant shares and feeds the American appetite for image...

...If people are afraid of you, you exist, you know who you are...

...For the time being, however, the argument has been vacated by a cycle of paranoia, wherein the lies, chauvinism, sweeping historical analogies, self-righteousness, and violence of American policy-makers are reflected in perfect miniature by the demagogues of American racism, off their rockers black and white alike and ready to give no quarter until their pain and rage are satisfied...

...Elected officials" are anathema to certain middle-class poverty leaders, because they inevitably "serve the interests of the middle class...

...I am mindful that the American ideal of making one's self has been for some a vicious myth...

...We cannot hope for a magic resolution of our double attitude toward poverty, since poor people are in fact burdens as well as honorable victims...

...Anyone but the most rigid determinist would have to acknowledge positive possibilities in the ferment created by the beginnings— and the idea—of a war on poverty...

...Some radicals unwittingly contradict themselves in calling for welfare reform...

...It's even possible to understand why some historians see the riots and the talk of guerrilla warfare as symptoms of the inevitable disruption that occurs whenever a new class or group forces its way into the mainstream of American society...

...These boys don't want training—they want in right away...

...Furthermore, job-holders must be trained to see and use that connection, probably while they are on the job...

...For at least one summer this end was achieved...

...Far from aloof, he"s deeply hurt at having been snubbed and used and moved away from...

...Naturally they resent the white establishment, whose official members they see as licensed hustlers —licensed, in some cases, to treat Negroes brutally...

...It seems clear that regardless of Black Power rhetoric—"burn this town," "shoot honkies," etc.—the main motives of those who joined in were economic...

...American society has a tremendous job to do in terms of creating genuine economic and educational opportunities...

...From the chapter "Saved" in The Autobiography of Malcolm X.) among others—the successful middle-class Negro who can't bear the torment of perceiving himself a part of "white" society while masses of his people are left behind...

...He would have an incentive to become skillful...

...Now, as violence raises the ante and there is no sign of slackening pressure abroad, there has emerged among radicals and liberals an apocalyptic yet personally exculpating world view in which the United States stands revealed as having been all along the representative of total reaction —history's antithesis, as it were, which in the throes of self-annihilation will liberate humanity...

...But work is even better...

...Already this gives him a role to play—destructive, threatening, but nonetheless part of the scene...

...What of the white civil rights and poverty workers—the idealistic students, the increasingly radical social workers, the impassioned ministers— who in past years have gone into the ghettos to unite themselves with America's most urgent cause...

...First he has an "image"—a militant image, a black image, a unique image without which one does not have access to the media...

...Stokely Carmichael has been to Cuba, singing loon-songs of worldwide guerrilla warfare...

...He picks them up—as Malcolm X did—by paying attention all day long to power plays...

...An interaction goes on between demagogue and potential rioter not unlike the traditional interaction between Negro preacher and potential lamb of Jesus...

...He wants America to pay attention...

...Still, the ghettos remained, Vietnam drew off funds, and local party hacks acted swiftly to eviscerate programs...

...In some cities—though no one likes to admit it—the hustling view of life has caused Negro youngsters to turn down decent jobs in favor of a more free-wheeling style of livelihood...

...If such an overall effort were under way, it would be matched by individual efforts to participate in it...

...Fair enough...

...Anyone in contact with the inhabitants of urban slums cannot fail to be impressed with a kind of realistic wisdom which, while not propelling its possessors up the ladder of American success, manages to provide sustenance, pleasure, and in some cases a version of affluence...

...If there were organized Negro assassins at work, it"s hard to believe they could have aimed so badly...

...Since he has the pay-off already, why should he bother with any form of education or self-discipline...

...It seems obvious that the Negroes will be hurt most, even as in every riot they make up a large majority of the dead and wounded...

...Granted, there is truth enough to such a view—especially when one is looking up from the bottom...